Chapter 227 Inventors in the slums (I wish everyone a healthy Dragon Boat Festival!)
New York itself was built around a port. There are dozens of piers of various sizes scattered around Manhattan Island. The spacious river is filled with various sailboats and steamships.
As the whistle blew, the steamship puffing out thick smoke slowly approached the pier. Every day, tens of thousands of European immigrants took steamships to New York and the New World. Many of them were penniless and had no money.
A few people were forced to make a living and were arrested as prostitutes at the dock. Many women could only watch helplessly as their fathers, husbands, elder brothers or brothers were captured as prostitutes.
The helpless women can only helplessly look for jobs in New York. The lucky ones will become maids, and the unlucky ones may even become prostitutes. Only a few lucky ones have the opportunity to ride a steam locomotive along the route.
The railway goes deep into the hinterland.
Railroads and immigration were changing the country, and of course the ongoing war was also changing the country.
The fifth borough of Lower Manhattan is one of the most famous slums in New York. There are many poor Irish people living here. Most of them wear shabby clothes with rough workmanship and are well-dressed. You can tell by their appearance that they are
Of course, the immigrants here are not just Irish, but also Germans, French and Italians. Among these immigrants, there are not only ordinary people, but also many skilled workers, and even
Engineer, mechanic.
But no matter where they come from, there are definitely few well-dressed people, so what if they are engineers? There is no shortage of such people in the United States, and besides, when I first came to your place, I can... A place like Luanxue
Not many people dress decently.
From the moment he came here, he felt that he had attracted the attention of others. For this reason, Lu Anxue's right hand deliberately swept down the hem of his clothes, revealing the short gun holster at his waist. This made the hostility much less. In a place like this, fists
That is the truth! Colt is the guarantee!
Lu An came here to find a watchmaker.
Looking for a watchmaker in District 5?
Do you need to travel so far to get your shoes repaired?
Of course there was no need for it, but the reason why he came here to find that watchmaker was entirely because of an occasional hearsay.
Others might laugh at the hearsay, but Lu Anxue felt that the rumor seemed to be true and very useful.
According to others' introduction, that person lives in District 5 and is a watchmaker, but there is more than one watchmaker here.
Come on, look for it!
But you can always look for it aimlessly.
Looking at the few beggars on the roadside, maybe these little beggars walking around the streets should know where they live.
Just when Lu Anxue was walking towards those little beggars.
Suddenly a figure appeared in front of him. A boy who was only thirteen or fourteen years old. He was wearing a uniform.
Postman.
The appearance of the postman made Lu Anxue's eyes light up. Compared with beggars, these postmen are the real living maps!
"Hello, young man."
"Sir, are you calling me??"
The little postman asked doubtfully.
"Yes, can I ask you something?"
Lu An modeled a ten-cent coin, and the little postman immediately took it happily.
"Sir, do you have any instructions?"
"I want to find a clockmaker, a clockmaker who can invent. His name seems to be..."
"Henry Goebbels! Sir, everyone here knows him as Mr. Henry Goebbels. He even built a telescope to see the stars and the moon in the square. It only costs 1 cent at a time."
This is really a no-brainer!
"Sir, they live right in front, at No. 15. That's Mr. Pierre's apartment, and Mr. Henry Goebbels's shoe shop is there. Be careful, there's sewage on the ground."
Someone was leading the way, and soon they reached their destination.
"Okay, sir, that's it, that's Mr. Goebbels' shop."
Finally, when he arrived at a dilapidated three-story apartment building, Lu Anxue looked at the simple watch shop and seemed to understand why the watchmaker had not applied for a patent - poor!
Applying for a patent costs money. For most ordinary people, not to mention spending more than ten dollars to apply for a patent, it is a problem in life.
"What? Electric light?"
Henry Goebbels looked at this Oriental man in surprise. He originally thought that the man came to repair his watch, but he never thought that it was for his old invention many years ago.
"Yes, sir, I heard someone say that a clockmaker named Goebbels on Monroe Street made an electric lamp more than ten years ago. It even stayed on for hundreds of hours. Please tell me.
Did you invent it?"
"Ah, I did build it ten years ago, but it seems to be of no use."
Henry Goebbels shrugged his shoulders casually, and then said.
"After all, lighting it requires electricity, and it requires a lot of electricity. There are many technical difficulties, even now."
Is this why he didn't apply for a patent?
It is for this reason that Edison invented not just the electric light, but a series of inventions from generators to light switches. With these inventions, the electric light became popular. Otherwise, it was just a light bulb, that is, a light bulb.
It was precisely because he did not see its use that Henry Goebbels did not apply for it. After all, applying for a patent requires funds. In history, countless inventors who lived in poverty did not even have the funds to apply for a patent, so they could only watch helplessly.
Leave your inventions at home to gather dust.
Even as early as 1854, Henry Goebbels used a carbonized bamboo filament and placed it under a vacuum glass bottle to energize and emit light. The light bulb he tested at that time could last for 400 hours, but he did not have the money to apply for a patent.
Coupled with the limitations of knowledge, he ignored this invention. More than twenty years later, Edison became the inventor of the electric light. And Henry Goebbels? He even served as a technical consultant for the light bulb company to produce the invention he invented.
Electric light, was sued by Edison, and eventually died in poverty.
"So, sir, do you have the actual electric light here?"
"Of course, it has been kept in the box by me. As long as it is powered on, it will light up. Sir, are you interested in it? I have some other inventions. I am a mechanic.
Sir, I have other more better inventions that may interest you."
Seeing that the other party did not answer immediately, Henry Goebbels quickly changed his words.
"For $100, I can sell it to you, including my design drawings, for just $100, sir, what do you think?"
